Vice-president Joe Biden will have something to do besides twiddle his thumbs.
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama unveiled a new task force on Sunday charged with helping struggling working families, as an aide said Obama’s economic recovery plan would be expanded to try to save 3 million jobs.
The White House Task Force on Working Families, to be headed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, would aim to boost education and training and protect incomes and retirement security of middle-class and working families whose plight Obama had made a central issue of his campaign.
Biden’s panel of top-level officials and labor, business, and activist representatives would help keep working families “front and center every day in our work,” Obama said in a statement released by his transition office.
Biden said the economy was in worse shape than he and Obama had thought it was.
“President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around,” Biden told ABC’s “This Week.”
“We’ve got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs,” he said.
More:
The President-elect has set the following goals for the task force:
· Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities
· Improving work and family balance
· Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety
· Helping to protect middle-class and working-family incomes
· Protecting retirement securityMembers of the White House Task Force on Working Families will include the Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Commerce, as well as the Directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.
Can the champion of the credit card industry protect the working man? We shall see.
is that Biden’s chief economist is liberal Jared Bernstein.
Can the champion of the credit card industry protect the working man?
I had the same reaction
a good start–effective immediately with no 18 months delay — with interest rates at zero for the banksters and their triple helpings at the TARP — how about deploying a copycat of the Australian government bill
– freeze credit card interest rates at 13% and curtail other shenanigans –billing cycle changes, overlimit fees, etc.
It’s working well for all. Visa and Mastercard in Australia are reporting profits.
BTW, Canada looking to do the same.
limits? that’d never do, there’s still treasure to plunder, and the banksters would have to give up some of their perks and bonuses that have, so far, totaled $1.6 billion this year:
they expect the UAW to do. guess it depends on your relative position on the food chain, eh.
Anybody else starting to see a “set a thief to catch a thief” strategy developing with Obama’s appointments? Not that Biden is a thief — he’s just been too responsive to their demands. He’s also in a position to know how they operate and neutralize them.
If Obama does have some such idea in mind, the big IF is whether he’ll be able to keep such a complex ecosystem on track to accomplish what he wants. Damn hard thing to do.
Who’sWhat’s in your wallet?.
in comparison to the original six nations of the European Economic Community. The same 5 goals were at the forefront of labor demands and Dutch administration policies from the seventies through the eighties. In difficult years, labor unions and organizations of employers came together to rebuild the economy and set goals. A major asset would be investment policy and innovation to create jobs lost in manufacturing. In the first fase immigrants from non-EEC countries would be hired for low-salaried jobs and stayed when these jobs were moved to Southern Europe or North African countries. Later the same happened with former Communist nations of Eastern Europe and the Far East. Now Japan and South-Korea have become competitive in technology and India and China provide the low-cost labor for mass manufacturing. Europe is still competitive although in some countries the unemployment rate is too high. The citizens in Europe do have universal health care and many “social” benefits including pensions. The benefits vary across the EEC as do government deficits to guarantee pensions.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“I know the economic health of working families has eroded”
Heh. Indeed.
I do not disparage Biden. However, this sounds like a feel good showcase, a sop to liberals. It has no concrete goals like the Infrastructure project (lots of juicy contracts, overseen by Ray LaHood of Illinois, kickback capital of the free world), or the Energy project. It seems more like a committee to study it to death.
Unfortunately, my thoughts as well, though hopefully we both are wrong.
Why no union reps on the committee?
Why no goal of strict enforcement of labor’s right to organize?
It seems like a clever move to tie the top of the Presidential team to the core of their support base – working families – and a means to coordinate the many complex and conflicting interests and priorities – tax, healthcare, education, jobs – around a focus on the family. Biden will probably do a good sales job on the initiative – which helps to humanise the administartion otherwise more concerned with wars and macro-economics – but what will it ultimately deliver?
If Biden wants to be on the ticket for the second term, had better deliver some concrete benefits to working families…